Nobody knows what the economic future holds. Nobody. The time to be most suspicious of people is when they seem most certain of their opinions and views. The seeming certainty of the Coalition is very frightening. They appear to believe that if they do the right thing at present, and make cuts, then they will achieve the booming future they want. But the two things are not necessarily connected, not at all.

Of course, there are plenty of people who do not believe that the Coalition's signature undertaking, "the cuts", is the right thing anyway. They insist that national economies are not like household economies (correctly enough), because they have decided to seize on the way that Cameron, like Thatcher before him, has chosen to present his thinking. But disproving a metaphor is not the same as disproving the situation it was recruited to illustrate.

Making some cuts in national spending is necessary at present because the bond markets, which lend money to countries, tend to see nations unwilling to stop piling up ever larger structural deficits as larger credit risks (because they are), and hike interest rates on their lending accordingly. This is what is actually happening. It is the situation we are in, like it or not. No metaphors are needed to explain it.

Fiscal discipline really is necessary, unless a nation chooses to default, and thereby turn its back on the rest of the world, volunteering as a pariah state, in some sort of crazed, chaotic limbo. That's why Ireland is accepting its awful role as Europe's latest fall-guy – because the alternative is even worse.

Some people like the idea of crazed, chaotic limbo. I like the idea myself, as long as it remains an idea, perhaps nicely developed and described in a piece of dystopian fiction. It's amusing when the student protests – reasonable when they are against the particular nature of the restructuring of higher education on offer, unreasonable when they are "widened" to be about "the cuts" or the nature of the state – are reported as having been "hijacked by small anarchist groups". Small anarchist groups at least appear to understand where not making "the cuts" will lead – to fast, decisive, probably brutal charges in the nature of British life, far more brutal than those that will be brought about by the cuts.

It is sometimes suggested that there is little protest against the cuts, except from students and schoolchildren, because adults are too craven and apathetic to stand up and be counted. The truth is that they are too wise to waste their energy on something so silly. Protesting against the cuts is like protesting against water's stubborn habit of flowing downwards. Pointless, unless you are a committed anarchist, in which case everything is worth protesting against.

But the kind of cuts that the Government is making, and more importantly, the kind of money they intend to spend, are certainly worth scrutinising, and rejecting if they are found wanting. The busy reform that the Coalition wants to introduce in every department? In virtually every instance – the Treasury, Welfare and Business aside – it is foolhardy. Managing the impact of cuts on large departments such as the Home Office, Education and Health (even though the latter two are ostensibly ring-fenced) is enough for now. Reform should be led, but not dictated, by the need to achieve the necessary cuts.

As for piling new duties on local authorities at the same time as demanding massive cuts, well, the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems may each find solace in telling themselves they are promoting "localism". But in reality they are probably dealing "localism" a mighty hammer blow. The Lib-Dems, particularly, need to focus more on the impact the Coalition's policies may have on local government, and a little less on justifying Conservative policy. The Government is currently just trying to do too much, before you even start getting into ideology.

It is interesting how much the student protests have relied on exploiting the political weaknesses of the Coalition, rather than concentrating on promoting the sound intellectual arguments that can be mustered against the reform of higher education. A protest that started out insisting that it filled a vacuum left by the failure of politics has remained obsessed with the promises the Lib-Dems made in its manifesto for government, and the hypocrisy the party has shown in ditching them for coalition. It's a fair point. The Lib-Dems went into Coalition partly in order to show that Coalition could work (or so they told themselves and us). But by reneging quite so spectacularly on pre-election promises, they suggest that any party can say anything at all pre-election, then ditch it once they are in a Coalition government. It's hardly a come-on to people used to getting a democratic say twice a decade.

Yet, that in the end is the focus of these protests, supposedly so explosive and so indicative of civil unrest to come. In the main, the protestors simply say, "Don't make promises if you are not going to keep them." This seems like very little to ask for. Especially in the wake of the expenses scandal, politicians ought to be grateful that people still expect them to keep promises at all, and grateful that there is such widespread disappointment when they do not.

But politicians should wise up, now. The arrogant ambitions of this government, in wishing to rush through so much reform so fast at such a difficult time, the idiocy with which they seem to think negotiating or imposing cuts is the same as actually making them – these are hubristic mistakes, of the kind we saw in the last Conservative government. The Lib-Dems are foolish to believe that their tiny tweaks will persuade the electorate that their hands were clean, when it's time to vote again.

For the most awful thing is that the government seems to believe that the financial crisis is over, rather than merely in abeyance, and that the world after the recession will look very much the same as the world before it. As I say, nobody knows what the economic future holds. Which is why a little caution and a little forethought is what is most needed from government now.